Jake Gyllenhaal is the latest big movie star making the temporary jump to TV for a sophisticated limited series. He’s also bringing a big name director, Denis Villeneuve, with him. The duo, who previously collaborated on Prisoners and Enemy, will re-team for a limited series at HBO titled The Son.
The series will be based on Joe Nesbø‘s book of the same name. The project was originally planned as a feature film, but will now be transformed into a multi-episode series that focuses on “the story of one father’s quest for vengeance set amid Oslo’s brutal hierarchy of corruption”.
The book was released back in 2014 and quickly became a New York Times bestseller. If Nesbø’s name rings a bell, it’s probably because he also wrote The Snowman, which was turned into the disastrous Michael Fassbender film a few years ago. The Son will almost certainly be better than that adaptation; production was infamously shut down with 15% of the screenplay still unfilmed.
Gyllenhaal will star in and produce The Son through his Nine Stories banner. Although Gyllenhaal hasn’t had a big TV role, he has signed onto one kind of recently, also with HBO. Back in April of 2019, it was announced that he would star in limited series Lake Success for the network. Unfortunately we haven’t heard anything since. One imagines The Son has now taken precedence.
Villeneuve will direct all of the episodes of the show as well as executive produce. Westworld duo Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy have also boarded the series as executive producers, while Lenore Zion will serve as The Son‘s showrunner and executive produce.
Executive Vice President of HBO Programming Francesca Orsi said in a statement: “Denis is a master at weaving visually exquisite and unique narratives, Jake is a gifted actor and producer whose work often traverses provocative and compelling terrain, and of course, he and Denis have collaborated brilliantly in the past. We are beyond excited to see how this powerhouse team tackles this exceptional work”.
When a director/star combo who have already worked extremely well together team up once again, it’s worth getting excited about. Gyllenhaal and Villeneuve are both towards the top of their respective professions, and it will be fascinating to see how their collaboration continues when it’s elongated over a whole limited series.
#Peace.Love.TheSon
